New Quilt Guild

The Bayberry Quilters are the largest guild on the Cape. I joined in August and attended a new member's tea a couple of weeks ago. The first meeting was yesterday. Being a new member I was prepared to be anonymous, but I found several people were friendly, including another new member who happened to sit near me who remembered me introducing myself at the tea. Very nicely the oldest member of the quilt, who was there and seems to e going strong at 96, came up and introduced herself, said she does only hand quilting and is a charter member of the guild. I heard later she is quite a good quilter and has been honored with one woman shows. People were, in fact, friendlier than expected. I think I'm going to enjoy this group.

The speaker was super quilter Pat Delaney who began making blue ribbon quilts ten years ago and has produced at least one major winner each year since [they win in multiple shows and multiple categories.] The photo above gives very little sense of her quilts. She is very strong on color blending and harmonics, and, of course, is technically a perfectionist -- as was obvious when she mentioned taking out machine stitching on a 10 or 12 inch wide border of a full size quilt. She did it because it could not be awarded a prize as was since the tension had made some puckers on the back. That kind of perfectism it way beyond my comprehension.

Clearly she is very much a professional prize winner. This is no hobby, this is her identity, she works very hard at it and produces spectacular quilts with a traditional/contemporary sensibility. They are heirloom quilts but not art quilts.

The meeting moved along very efficiently, this group was more attentive than I found at Empire Guild meetings. They have my favorite extra that Empire had as well, only it's handled a little differently -- the scrap/share table. I contributed a number of quilt magazines and took several pieces of fabric -- very satisfying. The meeting place is one town further east, easy to reach and a very satisfactory room in a church annex. There was even free coffee! Now that's a lovely addition to a 9:00 a.m. meeting.